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Something fishy about HarperPAC

With supreme irony, Stephen Harper wants to dissociate himself from his namesake HarperPAC, a pre-election propaganda group that is trying to support him.

His official head of propaganda, Kory Teneycke, suggests the PAC is “politically damaging,” in part because it may be seen as raising “very questionable donations” and attempting to skirt the Canada Elections Act.

The questionable donations may be legal but are secret, the way Stephen Harper prefers to operate (like part of the funding for his Alliance leadership campaign).

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Teneycke is not questioning the message that HarperPAC is delivering, just the lack of control of the message. If they had called themselves “Friends of a Strong-Proud-Free Canada” they would probably have been congratulated, regardless of any dubious sources of funding provided the message could edited by trusted friends.

Geoffrey Kemp, Mississauga

HarperPAC is part of a well-planned and well-executed strategy by the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) designed to curtail or discredit pre-writ third-party spending and to give the impression that the CPC is taking the high road when it comes to election spending.

There can be little doubt that HarperPAC was never intended to become a fully functioning third-party advertiser. The objective of the ex-CPC staffers (in all likelihood at the behest of the Prime Minister’s Office) was not to produce and air negative ads but rather to shine a negative light on anti-Harper political action committees. Why? The answer is simple.

The CPC does not need the assistance of any third-party advertiser. It is extremely well funded and can readily afford to run all the negative pre-writ advertising it wishes. In addition, the Harper Government has made it abundantly clear that it will make no apologies for spending tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to shamelessly promote its recent budget giveaways and, indirectly, themselves.

However, what the CPC truly does fear are the anti-Harper ads that are currently being produced and aired by such PACs as Engage Canada. The polls show that most Canadians have had their fill of Harper and the greater fear for the Conservatives is that more such anti-Harper PACs will arise. Hence, the ruse.

First, set up a phony PAC with a name so closely associated with the Prime Minister’s and brand that he would have little choice but to come forward and shut it down. Next, send Kory Teneycke out to every media outlet that will have him to expound at length about how the CPC is indeed taking the high road on election spending and how deeply disappointed and aggrieved they are that Canadian democracy is being undermined by the likes of Engage Canada. The end objective is to either shut down the anti-Harper PACs or at least to somehow curtail their effectiveness by portraying them as undemocratic.

Teneycke will, of course, not say that the Harper government created this situation with a loophole in their Fixed Elections Act, that the Fair Elections Act introduced voter suppression measures, that the CPC or one of its members has been convicted of election fraud in every election since 2006, or that the Harper government will be spending enormous amounts of both party and public money during the pre-writ period. That would be hypocritical.

Lyle J. Goodin, Bowmanville

I’m having a hard time believing that the Prime Minister’s Office was not somehow involved in the passing of Bill C-377 and the creation and sudden demise of HarperPAC.

Senate Speaker Leo Housakos is overruled by his fellow Conservatives to force closure by changing the rules on the fly. This was obviously a betrayal of democratic principles and of Housakos by his own Conservative caucus. The fact that he does not have the backbone to immediately resign as Speaker and possibly from caucus, suggests to me that he knew all along what was going to happen. The Conservatives will no doubt claim that they were ensuring a bill already passed democratically by Parliament becomes law.

HarperPAC was created by Conservative insiders yet no one in the PMO, and hence Stephen Harper, knew about it? It is well known that Harper micromanages all and everything Conservative so it is hard to believe he was not aware.

Now that it’s gone he can claim the high road and point out that only the NDP and the Liberals use questionable third-party funding. More likely this was a set up from the beginning and we’ve all been taken for a ride.

John Blake, Picton

Harper may call an election any time he wants, but he stirred the American fixed-date system into the pot to create the boiling mess we are now experiencing with U.S.-style political action committees. I thought Conservatives were supposed to honour and keep our old tried-and-true ways. Instead they have inflicted us with four-year, non-stop political advertising campaigns. Shame!

Hugh Jenney, Stella

Sadly, U.S.-style political action committee advertisements (PAC ads), financed by anonymous donors and with no accountability, have become a significant feature in Canadian politics. To argue that they represent freedom of speech is specious in as much as we don’t know who is speaking.

Couple this development with the restrictive provision of the (Un)Fair Elections Act that will disenfranchise countless otherwise eligible voters and you have a real and constant danger to our democratic process.

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